


No Accounting For Taste

by lazulisong



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-08 09:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock hears there's no accounting for taste, but this unseemly thing for Benedict Cumberbatch that John is cherishing is just not on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Accounting For Taste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rageprufrock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/gifts).



> Meg: ugh can you read over John's Man Crush and tell me what I'm missing with it  
> Mer R: probably a plot  
> Mer R: I'll look  
> Meg: that too  
> Meg: plots are for losers  
> Mer R: yes dear
> 
> I'm sorry, Mer. SO SORRY.
> 
> I feel like this could be about fifteen thousand times better, but I also feel like if I keep staring at it in GDocs it's going to turn into a rabid wereotter and bite my ass off, so here it is. 
> 
> This is for Pru.

John wasn’t expecting to find Sherlock crouched over the sad corpse of John’s stereo at 8:55 in the morning. There’s something smug about the set of his shoulders, but that’s not important, because it is _eight fifty-five in the morning_ on Wednesday. John has his cuppa and his toast and he’d really been looking forward to listening to his show. “Cabin Pressure” was basically the only thing that made Wednesdays tolerable for him. 

“What,” says John, helplessly.

“Oh, sorry, did you want to use this?” says Sherlock. Something about his voice suggests a cat sitting on the pillow, while you try to convince it to get off so you can go to bed. John hates cats, a feeling that is horribly not mutual. It’s like they look at him and know that despite his arguments he would definitely give them the last bite of tuna if they began to purr.

This has too many depressing implications for his relationship with his flatmate, so John pushes the thought aside.

“Yes,” says John, and then, “Dammit, Sherlock, my show will be coming on!”

“Will it?” says Sherlock coolly.

John stares at him for a minute and says, “Is this because I didn’t want to come on the triple murder case with you because I got the chance to go to the Cabin Pressure recording?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” lies Sherlock, which makes John yearn to give him a good clout over the ear.

“Sherlock, it was a chance in a lifetime to go to a --” John’s voice dies down, and he swivels toward the coffee table. “Sherlock, if you did something to Benedict Cumberbatch’s autograph, it will go very hard for you.”

“I could forge you one,” says Sherlock. “You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Not the point!” says John, rushing over to the table. Fortunately, Sherlock left the autograph severely, one might even say pointedly, alone. He wasn’t so kind to the actual programme from the recording. “Sherlock, really.”

Sherlock looks away with a scowl. “You said you didn’t want acid stains on the table any more.”

John looks at the clock, sighs, and says, “Don’t -- just, fix my stereo or get me a new one. I am going downstairs to see if Mrs Hudson will let me listen on hers.”

Behind him, as he leaves, Sherlock scowls at the radio again.

 

Sherlock dislikes Benedict Cumberbatch because:  
1\. What sort of name is that.  
2\. He looks like a horse with a ginger wig on.  
3\. John makes this unconscious face like he’s looking at a dessert in a posh shop window he can’t afford every time Cumberbatch stretches out his neck, which is like a giraffe’s neck. He licks his lips, and his eyes go all heavy lidded for half a second, and Sherlock’s stupid mind extrapolates from there.  
4\. John has watched nearly everything he has acted in, even the completely terrible and boring detective show where he swanned around in Dior and a leather coat that fell to his feet and flapped around uselessly. John spends the entire hour staring at his legs. It’s awful.  
4a. Sherlock’s deleted the time he came in to see John blowing his nose vigorously as Cumberbatch, dying of some wasting disease and drinking morphine like fizzy water, went on a spiritual journey to Wales. Only it keeps rewriting itself because anything to do with John is like a trojan. It just won’t stay deleted. (Except for the names of the women, who don’t really count. They’re not important to John, and so they’re not important to Sherlock.)  
5\. Sherlock doesn’t even care about what humans find attractive in their stupid mating dances, and he can’t understand why John’s harmless and relatively minor attraction to an actor should bother him that much.

He texts Mycroft, which he knows is stupid, but so is everything else about Benedict Cumberbatch and how John touches his tongue to his upper lip when there’s a segment about him on one of the crass, disgusting gossip shows that run on repeat at Speedy’s.

MH: While I am of course delighted you have a real boy feeling, brother mine, I cannot in good conscience banish Benedict Cumberbatch to the Colonies.  
SH: Are you afraid your assistant will leave you with the filing?  
MH: It would take too much effort to stop them from importing everything he stars in, don’t be stupid.  
SH: You’re stupid. And eating a cream pastry right now. So much for the diet, I see.

He waits for Mycroft to deny it or demand to know how he knows, but Mycroft cruelly ignores him until later that afternoon, when a courier appears with tickets to a showing of War Horse.

Sherlock lights the fire with them, which makes him feel better for about five minutes, but then John comes back babbling with delight because Lestrade had given him tickets (that Mycroft, obviously, had given to him to give to John) to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Sherlock sits silently and hates everything, but especially Benedict Cumberbatch’s ginger hair, for an hour.

At the end of the hour, John rattles down and says, “Well? Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” says Sherlock, surfacing from the bleak pit of boredom and despair. John’s wearing his blue shirt that his ex-sister-in-law got him and some black trousers that Sherlock thinks he picked at random at an OxFam shop, but he can’t tell which one. He’s not wearing his good shoes, and he’s carrying a windbreaker jacket instead of his nice blazer. So an evening out, but not with a new interest. But someone he still wants to look nice for, so maybe a friend he’s interested in making into a conquest, or an old lover.

John sighs at him, patient. “The movie, Sherlock. It starts in an hour.”

“What about it?”

“We’re going,” says John.

Sherlock rolls over and stares at him. “Lestrade gave you the tickets,” he points out.

“Lestrade gave me the tickets because he hates spy movies,” says John, which is really more observant than Sherlock was expecting. “Also, he’s not my type.”

Sherlock snorts.

“Bit married for my taste,” says John.

“His wife is cheating on him again,” says Sherlock.

“Oh God,” says John, “please, just. Just tell me you haven’t told him this.”

“I don’t need to,” says Sherlock. “He knows already but he doesn’t want to admit it. You can tell by the way he fidgets with his wedding ring.”

“This,” says John, “this, right here, is why I can’t take you anywhere nice.”

 

In the movie, Benedict Cumberbatch’s character’s lover says, “If there’s someone else, you could tell me. I’m a grownup, you know,” and the character only manages to hold his cold expression until the man slams out the door.

John, to Sherlock’s horror, sniffles audibly when Peter begins to cry.

Sherlock glares at him but John doesn’t do anything but blow his nose discreetly and settle back down to watch the rest of the film. Sherlock already knows who the mole is, of course, and he wants to text, but he knows that if he does one of the females behind him will hiss at him angrily and John will give him a look -- a Look in Capitals, his nanny used to call it -- and it will be boring all around. Instead he sinks into thought and surfaces only when a female behind him makes a soft catcall at the appearance of some ridiculous creature in a blue shirt. He turns around and stares at her rudely, but she’s grinning to herself and ignores him. It’s going to get him in trouble with John if he deduces anything about her besides the obvious facts, so he sinks further down into his seat and pulls up the memory of a treatise on road-making.

“That was quite good,” says John afterward. They and the females are the only ones left after the credits. They’re talking about the plot and the suits -- one seems much more deeply interested in the suits, which Sherlock almost approves of (God alone knows the plot wasn’t much to speak of) -- as they gather their things.

Sherlock gives John a look. A Look in Capitals.

John sighs, and says, “Why did you let me drag you along, then?”

Sherlock tilts his head. “Why did you want to take me?”

The theatre’s still half-dark but he can see John’s face perfectly. “Isn’t that what people do? Go to movies with their friends?”

“John,” sighs Sherlock, but unfolds himself from the chair rather than argue with John’s mulish look.

“I really don’t understand you sometimes, Sherlock,” says John as they leave the theatre.

Sherlock takes a deep breath of air, the sour smell of exhaust and the damp dankness of wet streets, sees an oil slick on the road waiting for examination, sees and hears a fight between a man and a woman. He thinks she’s cheating on him, she knows he’s cheating on her, but it won’t be anything that Sherlock will get involved in: it’s a boring little fight in someone’s boring little life. She’ll probably leave him, and he’ll be left with the uneasy feeling he deserved it. John will ask him how he knows.

“Nobody understands me,” he says, matter of fact, and even as John makes a terrible face and opens his mouth to object, Sherlock lifts his hand for a cab. “It doesn’t matter, John, I’m used to it. Come along, you haven’t eaten for four hours.”

John allows himself to be stuffed in the cab, but he says, “What do you mean, nobody understands you,” and then, “I’m a bit more worried about the last time _you_ ate, you lunatic.”

Sherlock waves an impatient hand and says, “I ate Thursday.”

John makes another face that is so awful that Sherlock wonders for a moment if Nanny was right and your face could be stuck like that. “There are so many things wrong with that,” he says finally. “I don’t know where to start.”

"So don't bother," says Sherlock, and slides into the cab after him.

**Author's Note:**

> Befuddled poking around the BBC site produces the information that Cabin Pressure airs / aired on Wednesdays at nine am, which makes me wonder if Sherlock would even be awake to resent John listening to it.
> 
> Cabin Pressure does in fact feature Benedict Cumberbatch, and also it is as funny as shit and readily available in mp3 format, which, THANK YOU BBC FOR MAKING IT EASY TO GIVE YOU MONEY. LOOK HOW MUCH MONEY MY ROOMMATE AND I GAVE YOU, BECAUSE YOU MADE IT EASY FOR US TO DO SO.
> 
> Anyway I have no idea if BBC has studio audiences for any of their radio dramas, but I’m pretending they are because I’ve seen publicity stills of the Cabin Pressure cast on what is obviously a stage, which scripts in their hands.


End file.
